1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to a data conversion unit, a data conversion method, and an electronic apparatus having such data conversion unit to enhance data processing.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, an electronic apparatus such as a copier, printer, facsimile, or multi-functional apparatus having copying/printing/facsimile functions may exchange data with an external memory unit via an interface such as a parallel interface or a serial interface. The external memory unit may be a non-volatile memory card, a hard disk unit, an optical recording medium or the like, for example.
When it is necessary to enhance the performance of such an electronic apparatus, such as its data-security capabilities, an encoding/decoding capability or function for exchanging data with the external memory unit is added. Specifically, such an encoding/decoding function is installed in the electronic apparatus by replacing a controller board of the electronic apparatus, by installing a software program for encoding/decoding, or by connecting a data encoding/decoding device to the electronic apparatus via an expansion slot of the electronic apparatus as an optional device, for example.
However, such methods have certain drawbacks, as described below.
For example, if a software program is installed in an electronic apparatus to add an encoding/decoding function, a CPU (central processing unit) of the electronic apparatus may need to allocate some of its processing capacity to process such added encoding/decoding function. Consequently, the CPU may not achieve a particular data transmission speed originally designed for the CPU, and as a result, the electronic apparatus may fail to process data at a preferred processing speed.
If a high-performance CPU is originally installed in the electronic apparatus, such high-performance CPU can process data at such preferred processing speed even if a software program is installed in the electronic apparatus. However, if no additional function is added to the electronic apparatus, such high-performance CPU may not be used effectively, thus reducing the cost performance of the electronic apparatus because such high-performance CPU is a relatively expensive device.
Further, although inserting an optional device (e.g., data encoding/decoding device) into an expansion slot of the electronic apparatus can enhance the performance of the electronic apparatus, if the electronic apparatus does not have a sufficient number of expansion slots which can be used for accommodating such add-on optional device, such optional device might not be added to the electronic apparatus. Consequently, depending on a hardware configuration of the electronic apparatus, such optional device might never be added to the electronic apparatus.